Fruit Collections

West Dean Garden's celebrated apple collection is housed within
and around the Walled Garden. There are over 100 varieties of
apple and 45 varieties of pear, including heritage varieties with
links to West Sussex, many of them trained into exquisite
traditional shapes.

In its heyday, at the turn of the last century, this area would
have been the furiously active 'engine room' for driving the whole
of the extensive gardens operation. Fruit was a very important part
of the kitchen garden economy with a wide variety of different
fruits being produced at all times of the year utilising the
'forcing' capacity of the glasshouses and frames. Pineapples, figs,
peaches, nectarines, grapes, cherries, plums, soft fruit, pears and
apples were all grown to perfection, polished prepared and taken to
the great house.

The apple gained a status in the British Isles that it has never
achieved elsewhere. In 1883 there was a National Apple Congress
held in the Great Vinery of the Chiswick Gardens of the Royal
Horticultural Society. Its aim was to resolve the confusion of
identities which had developed and to select a good range of apples
for commercial growers, but it also served as a triumphant display
of the diversity of apples growing throughout the country. There
were 1,500 varieties and the event attracted thousands of visitors
and was kept open an extra week to accommodate all who wished to
see it.

Sadly, increased competition from imports forced English growers to
concentrate on a handful of good commercial varieties. The wealth
of varieties once grown commercially lingered on in derelict
orchards, declining Estate gardens and in the back gardens of
cottages and houses across the country.

Collection Aims

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in old orchards
and apple varieties prompted by initiatives such as Common Ground's
national Apple Day. West Dean's collection can be seen as part of
this interest. Our collection has 4 main aims:

To grow any variety that we know was grown at West Dean between
1890 and 1914, Edward James's parents period when the walled garden
was at its peak.

To grow a wide variety of Victorian varieties, as this is the
period of the development of the walled garden.

To grow both earlier and modern cultivars, to display as wide a
range of varieties as possible.

To grow all of these in as many diverse ways as possible
including half standards, 4-winged pyramids, goblets, oblique
cordons, espaliers, palmette verriers, and cross-bars.

The bulk of the walled garden fruit was planted in the
mid-nineties. Rootstocks used were MM106 for half standards and
espaliers. M26 for 4-winged pyramids, goblets, espaliers and M9 for
oblique cordons.

Recommended reading

'The Book of Apples' by Joan Morgan and Alison Richards, Ebury
Press, 1993.

'The English Apple' by Rosanne Sanders, Phaidon, 1988.

'Charleston Kedding - A History of Kitchen Gardening' by Susan
Campbell, Ebury Press,1996.